INSIGHTS
The honest student's blog
Investigations into AI detection, academic integrity, and how to defend your work.
How to Write a Literature Review (Even If You’ve Never Read a Single Paper)
What a literature review actually is, and what it isn't The literature review is the section of academic writing that students most often misunderstand, and the misunderstanding has a specific shape. A bad literature review is…
How to Paraphrase Without Plagiarizing: A 5-Step Method That Actually Works
The most common plagiarism is the kind students don't realize is plagiarism Most students intend to cite properly. The accidental plagiarism that…
How to Cite Sources in APA Format Without Going Insane
Why citation feels harder than it should Most students do not struggle with APA format because the rules are inherently complex. They…
I Was Falsely Accused of Using AI on My Essay. Here’s What Actually Happens Next.
The Adelphi case, and what it changed In February 2026, a New York state court issued an order that will likely shape…
How Professors Actually Detect AI Writing (It’s Not What You Think)
The detection software you have heard of is the smaller half of the story When students ask "how do professors detect AI…
Is Using AI for Schoolwork Cheating? A Framework Your Professor Would Actually Accept
The wrong question, and the better one "Is using AI cheating?" is the question most students ask. It produces a long argument…
AI Hallucinated Citations: Why ChatGPT Invents Sources (and How to Spot Them)
The brief that should not have existed In April 2023, a New York attorney named Steven Schwartz filed a brief in federal…
What Happens If You’re Accused of Using AI: A Step-by-Step Guide for Students
The email that ruins a Tuesday afternoon You upload a paper. Hours later — sometimes minutes later — an email arrives from…
Why AI Detectors Flag Non-Native English Writers More Often (and What to Do About It)
A 61% misclassification rate, and the students it costs In July 2023, a team of Stanford researchers led by Weixin Liang and…
Turnitin’s AI Detector Has a 4% False Positive Rate. Here’s the Math That Should Scare You.
The number Turnitin doesn't lead with When Turnitin launched its AI writing detector in April 2023, the company put a single statistic…